I sat through an hour presentation with Hubspot where they shared loads about email marketing best practices. I thought I would save you an hour. Here are the key take aways.
* Businesses are consumers: 88% of people use the same email for business and personal.
* Based on almost 10 billion emails sent Click through rates are much much higher on Saturday and Sunday.
* If you are going to email during the week sending early in the morning increases opens and click throughs.
* Most unsubscribes happen on Tuesday.
* Sending emails late in the evening around 11 pm increases your unsubscribes.
* Over 80% of business to business prospects and clients are reading email on their smart phones. Check your emails on mobile browsers to ensure they are mobile optimized.
* The more links in your email the more click throughs you will receive.
* Include reference information in your emails.
* Magic, reward, raffle are words that will cause unsubscribes. Check your spam folder and look at the subject line to define other words that will get you filtered out.
* You will not believe this but if you are only sending email once or twice per month you will actually increase your unsubscribes. If you are sending good info then send more often so they are familiar with your name.
This is the kind of data small business owners should take to heart to improve their business. Hubspot has a new tool that is in beta and will launch soon that will evaluate your email messages and give you feedback on how to improve. Very similar to their website grader.